


Walking on a String

by nwrenren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, My First AO3 Post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwrenren/pseuds/nwrenren
Summary: Tonks, numb, musing on the changes a year can bring.
Relationships: Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks
Kudos: 5





	Walking on a String

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Walking on a String, Matt Berninger ft Phoebe Bridgers - 
> 
> I knew that I was dead before you touched my lonesome skin,  
> You're never running out of ways to worm your way back in,  
> I hang my head and feel the oxygen drain

Death always separates life into two. She used to think that was such a cliché, but it was one for a reason. It just hadn’t split her life into two like she thought it would. Looking around her, sat at Hog’s head as she was always every night after her shift, she could clearly imagine what Tonks-a-year ago would have thought of this. 

Everything reminds her of _him_. Not _him_ as in the person who died, as if her messed up head couldn’t even accord him that remembrance, granted that she only had one year of acquaintance, of late nights drinking and pulling pranks and listening to stories about _him_ , not to mention sharing the same ancestors, but _him_ , tall, lean, self-proclaimed dark creature ( _too_ old, _too_ poor, _too_ dangerous) who made her heart stop and her eyes see stars. 

Last year, the Tonks sitting here would have been all aglow with happiness, heart fluttering that something she said had made him laugh like that, and feel for a moment that everything was alright with the world, as he looked at her with those brown eyes and the ruffled brown hair pulling for her fingers to run through them, the promise of tomorrow crackling between them. _That_ Tonks believed anything was possible, because he grabbed her arm in dark-lit corridors and pinned her against that wall and held her head in both hands as he kissed her like the world was ending, he whispered things she had always hoped but never been brave enough to think about herself, as she lay in his arms at Grimmauld Place after an Order meeting, he made her feel strong, like she could do anything, he gave her strength to survive this hell of a war, and when she went mad with worry about her rebel mother and her kind father, he was the only one who could quiet her. 

That Tonks would have never believed that after the bliss of the chase (her relentless, him hesitant but unable to resist, like a moth to a flame, after many missions with long glances and barely held back restrain, bare brushes with fingers and the agony of no release, her getting hot whenever he handed her a parchment or a cup of tea, because oh look at his large hands, and lean fingers, or when they were on a surveillance and leant back to back and she feared for her sanity from the feeling of his broad shoulder against her, when he address her with that slight head tilt and she lost all her mind, her mouth wide open as he talked about strategies and locations and oh, how could one man know so much about everything?), and the explosions( it had happened on the night after a particularly rigorous and tense stakeout, she had turned to him and smiled with relief when they apparated back to the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. Seeing the intensity of his gaze, she had dropped her eyes and mumbled something about making tea, when he crossed the room in three quick strides and covered her lips with his, mid-sentence. He went cold after that for two nights, barely glancing her way, until she turned up at his door after the Order meeting and demanded to be let in. He had opened the door, dragged her in, asked her stormily if she knew what she was getting into, and proceeded to rip her dress off as he swept her off her feet and made her faint with his kisses) , and the confessions (One night, while he lazily trailed his arm up and around her, she told him she never thought she had a thing for professors, and he retorted that he always knew he had a thing for badass pink haired aurors, and the thought of what followed that night still made her stomach drop and mind wander. Later, when she said she loved him for the first time, and she saw the panic and the dismay in his eyes. Much later, on Halloween night, he told her he loved her, against all better judgement), he would recklessly leave her, deciding that endangering his own life was better than being with her.

All she could think of was if it was someone else would he have stayed. Sometimes she wondered if she was not worth it. She should have been, he wouldn’t have looked at her like that, and kissed her like that, and clutched at her like a drowning man at night and held her and made her feel safe and warm, like home. Would he have stayed for an older, more mature woman, who didn’t cling and beg him each time to stop risking his life, because she didn’t know how to live her life without him now? Every time her thoughts took her down this path, she started getting angry first, angry at him for making her love him with no effort at all, for making her heart leap into her throat when she saw a brown-haired head walk in, or hear a rumour about another werewolf attack at some godforsaken corner of the country, for creating such a turmoil in her that she couldn’t change herself like she could since her birth. He had left her because of his transformations, and her she was, transformed into someone she couldn’t recognize, unlike anything she had ever been in her ‘young’ life. No one could complain about the lack of irony there. 

Inevitably she sunk into depression after this and then started feeling nothing at all. Then she would get up, as she was doing now, toss coins at the barkeeper and walk home, only stopping along the way to conjure her new Patronus, and pretend for a while.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the RLNT fanfiction writers who have brightened my darkest days. And also I would be amiss if I did not mention the role the book Fangirl played in getting me to write this. Now out to the world with you!


End file.
